Kay, that's a pretty good guess. That would be very disappointing since then no one would be able to do serious research on rented DC's. It would severely limit the way R&D points are applied and promote selling them across factions--which might be intended.

But I could have guessed one way or the other too. The point of asking in the "Questions for Admin" folder is so we don't have to guess.

Edited By: Gort Horth on Year 13 Day 282 15:43____________

My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you're ugly too.

Such a system would ensure that not only do ship factions already really/if ever produce their DCs for the public to buy, but now they have even less incentive to even rent them out, in fear of someone R&Ding them faster.

When I said each faction has their own tree, I was refering to ship factions having their ship tree, vehicle having a vehicle tree, mining having a mining tree, etc etc etc. A ship faction will be unable to research vehices, nor will a Mercenary be able to R&D droids (Unless those specific droids are on the Merc tree...).

“As I conceptualize the system, the Existing DCs will be placed somewhere on the owner faction's Tech Tree.”

Existing, owned, DCs will exist off the tree. The advantage to owning the YT-510 or whatever, is that you're already x steps ahead of everyone else with that vessel. I'm fairly certain that you will not be able to research a variant, until you get there again. Otherwise 10 minutes into R&D, the GE can simply go for the SuperDuper Star Destroyer, and it makes things even more unbalanced for those with DCs already.

I read it as "research points are stored on a data pad".
For gaining access on the next level on a faction tech tree you need a certain (hidden?) amount of points. You do this by "loading data pads" into the project.

So:
What you are doing with that data pad is then the choice of yours.
You can give it away to your faction or auction it off on the market.

Yes, I believe that's how it's going to work. More particularly, datapads will be either "claimable" like easter eggs and the like were to allow Theft to occur by simple physical possession (to transfer ownership), or they'll just be useable without a check for Owner/Quartermaster/Carrier of the datapad, bypassing the need to "claim" it entirely.

At the end of the day though, the "Research Points" have to be spent to unlock (or towards unlocking, depending on how the system will work), a 'leaf' on the tech tree of a particular faction. That Faction gains ultimate (and I assume non-transferable outside of normal faction-joining rules as the current DCs are) ownership of the DC.

Oddly enough that brings up another question regarding the DCs/Tech Trees and faction merging. Is each TYPE of faction (Ship, item, vehicle, government, etc.) getting their own Tech Tree to research (that is the same across all factions of that type), or is each single Faction (and all subsequent factions that are created) getting their own unique Tech Tree to research? Once that's answered, What happens to DCs and Tech Trees on faction merging?

The tech trees will be the same for every faction type. As far as I am aware, each faction will then research their way up, unlocking DCs for themselves. You will be able to see what other factions have researched as they will pop up on the rules pages, but you won't be able to research/build those entities until your faction researches their way up there as well.

A quick question regarding DC types and faction types. Just picking a random example out of thin air, say, a mining faction. What would the R&D opportunities be for such a faction type? Ships? Vehicles? hand held mining lasers? orbital ion cannons?*

Certainly things like improved prospecting vehicles, and things of that nature, but until we start looking at the tree more and diving it up a bit, I'm not sure how big each individual groups tree is gonna be.

Like, ship factions are going to have a lot, no getting around that, but what we pull out and hand to mercenaries/pirates/info/transport etc, is something we'll need to look at once we figure out more of the how, and then start on the what, per R&D.

Is system/planetary stats going to influenciate on how many points researching individual makes? Or how much it costs?

and just to be sure: When a player starts researching, he will research only on ONE of the 4 fields of research (which one he chooses), or he will generate points in all areas at once according to his skills and whatever the formula is?

And will we be able to 'see' what is 'above' our current position on the Tech tree? Or it'll be a 'secret'?

Moreover, Will the amount of points we need from each field that we need to unlock the Next Tech be known?